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Message
From
09/03/2004 08:27:09
Hilmar Zonneveld
Independent Consultant
Cochabamba, Bolivia
 
General information
Forum:
Visual FoxPro
Category:
Conferences & events
Miscellaneous
Thread ID:
00882336
Message ID:
00884387
Views:
7
>So far as the theoritical equation, I do not understand it, but I think it is flawed based on common sense. If speed effect time, it would be nice if someone proved it, and then was able to explain it to use in way that could be easily understood.

I want to comment about common sense. Common sense can be a very powerful guide, and I would not want to reject it outright. However, it is simply not sufficient to prove that things are as we think they ought to be. The World simply has some surprises for us.

Take an example from classical physics: precession.

Experiment 1: Take a free bicycle wheel and make it spin. Hold it on one end of the axis. You would expect gravitation to make the wheel fall down. Instead, the axis "escapes" from gravitation at a right angle, so you have to gradually turn around.

Experiment 2: Take a top (like children use for playing), and make it spin. Once again, the spinning top doesn't fall down immediately, as you would expect; instead. Instead, it precesses (changes the direction of its axis at right angles to the gravitational pull). Common sense says that it should fall down immediately; yet I have seen with mine own eyes that it doesn't. And, I have made the experiment with the bicycle wheel as well.

I have read explanations of this phenomenon (my physics book talks about addition of rotation vectors), but it still confuses me. Yet, I feel forced to accept the fact that precession does, indeed, exist.

An interesting application in Astronomy is that the Earth's axis gradually changes its position in space, making a full cycle in about 26,000 years. The North Pole of Earth's axis will not point close to the Polar Star in a few thousand years.
Difference in opinions hath cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether whistling be a vice or a virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire... (from Gulliver's Travels)
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